Deadly encounters between government forces and armed militants in Jammu and Kashmir have become routine since the late 1980s. With the latest episode of March 31, an alleged gunfight that resulted in the killing of Raashid Mughal, a 29-year-old youth from Arhama hamlet in Central Kashmir’s Ganderbal district, controversy has raised its head again. The Mughal family disputed the claims made in the official version of the incident.

The Indian Army claimed it had neutralised a “terrorist in an encounter” during a cordon-and-search operation conduced in Arhama jointly by the Army and Jammu and Kashmir Police. But it triggered a strong response from the victim’s family. After the initial claim, a defence spokesperson said the Jammu and Kashmir Police would establish the facts of the case and ascertain Raashid Mughal’s background.

After the killing on the intervening night of March 31 and April 1, the body was identified by means of an ATM card. The Mughal family approached Jammu and Kashmir Police on April 2, and his brothers identified Mughal. The brothers and other villagers said Mughal was a civilian and vouched for his innocence. They claimed that he had no connections whatsoever with militancy or with any armed group and had been “killed in cold blood”.

The same argument was maintained by all major Unionist voices from Jammu and Kashmir. They demanded transparency and a judicial probe, prompting Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha to order “a thorough and impartial magisterial inquiry”.

In a letter addressed to Ganderbal’s district Magistrate, the Jammu and Kashmir Home Department asked the magistrate to “get a thorough and impartial magisterial inquiry conducted into the matter to ascertain the facts and circumstances leading to the death of Raashid Ahmad Mughal, son of late Gull Zaman Mughal”. The department set a one-week deadline to complete the inquiry. Since the abrogation of Article 370 that gave the region semi-autonomy and special status and after the downgrading of its statehood in August 2019, law and order has been supervised by the Central Home Ministry through the Lieutenant Governor.

Opposition voices have repeatedly raised concerns about the delays and outcomes of the many probes that have been ordered into past incidents of a similar nature, especially from 2000 to 2021. The average Kashmiri has lost hope and has little or no expectations from the latest inquiry either.

Ordinary people, politicians, and religious leaders in the Kashmir valley have been recalling similar troubling stories from the past involving extrajudicial killings of youths in encounter killings such as Pathribal (2000) in South Kashmir, Machil (2010) in North Kashmir, Shopian (2020) in South Kashmir, and Hyderpora in Srinagar (2021), among others.

‘AFSPA, source of impunity’

Waheed Parra, a senior leader of the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Democratic Party (JKPDP) and a MLA from South Kashmir’s Pulwama constituency, pointed out that the controversial Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act (AFSPA), 1990, which grants unbridled powers and protection from prosecution to the Armed Forces operating in the region since the 1990s, is “the source of immunity and impunity”.

According to Parra, “Until the AFSPA remains in force in J&K, such problems will continue unabated.” The AFSPA was enacted on September 10, 1990, with retrospective effect from July 5, 1990, in Jammu and Kashmir to allow the armed forces to operate in “disturbed areas” of the region to fight militancy. Separately, the Disturbed Areas Act, 1992, is also in force in Jammu and Kashmir. The AFSPA grants special powers to the armed forces to use force, search homes based on mere suspicion, and arrest individuals without a warrant. Under Section 4 of AFSPA, Army personnel are also authorised to shoot to kill based on suspicion and dismantle structures suspected of harbouring militants. The law has been controversial wherever it is in force.

In the context of the Ganderbal death, Parra told Frontline: “It is the worst form of human rights violation. The victim (Raashid Mughal) is innocent. There should be a time-bound judicial probe to ascertain all facts.”

The legislator from Pulwama is not the only one to raise such a demand. On April 2, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah strongly argued that the claim of the Mughal family “should not be dismissed out of hand”. At the very least, he said, “this encounter needs a transparent and time-bound probe with the facts made public. Any attempt to obfuscate or delay the announcement of an inquiry will only damage credibility, and that serves no one’s interest.”

Mehbooba Mufti, former Chief Minister and president of the JKPDP, quoted Mughal’s family members, who have said the slain youth ran an NGO and worked as a part-time computer operator and had no links with militancy.

“Initially, the Army claimed to have killed a “foreign terrorist”; later, the statement was changed, and it was said the slain youth was a local involved in militancy. Both claims were incorrect,” Mufti told reporters, adding: “The body of Raashid Mughal too was taken to Baramulla in North Kashmir for burial. This is what is happening to our youth.”

In April 2020, the Home Ministry instituted a new policy of not handing over the bodies of alleged militants killed in military operations to their families. In November 2021, in Srinagar’s Hyderpora area, after a three-day protest by family members of three slain youths—Mohammad Altaf Bhat, Dr Mudasir Gul, and Amir Magray—the Jammu and Kashmir government gave in to the demand that the victims’ bodies be exhumed from a remote graveyard in North Kashmir’s Handwara town, and the mortal remains of at least two victims were delivered to the families for a burial in Srinagar.

According to Mehbooba Mufti, Kashmiri youth “have to come forward to join mainstream politics, contest municipal, urban local body and Assembly elections to claim their rightful place and be the voice of the voiceless and oppressed people”.

“This is the way to fight the prevailing climate of fear,” she said.

Mufti’s sentiment was echoed by the Srinagar-based head priest, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, in his mandatory Friday sermon at Jamia Masjid on April 3. Addressing the congregation, the Mirwaiz initially talked about the repeated closure of the Central Mosque on important occasions like Eid-ul-Fitr, Eid-ul-Zuha, Shab-e-Qadr (the blessed night during Ramzan) and Jumma’t-ul-Vida (last Friday of the month of fasting) for the last seven consecutive years. “Access to this central piece of worship (Jamia Masjid) for the Muslims of Kashmir is repeatedly curtailed at the will of the authorities,” the Mirwaiz said. He went on to speak of the Ganderbal “encounter” killing.

“Raashid Mughal’s family is saying he was a part-time computer operator, running an NGO, with no links to militancy. He was picked up and killed in cold blood. Painful memories of such “encounters” have been revived. We can only hope that justice is done, but our past experiences do not inspire confidence,” the Mirwaiz said, adding that the LG Manoj Sinha had ordered a magisterial enquiry and he hoped that “this time justice gets done and those responsible for the killing are held to account and punished”.

There is a reason why probes do not instil much confidence among Kashmiris.

2020 Amshipora encounter

In 2023, a two-member tribunal headed by Justice Rajendra Menon suspended the life sentence of Captain Bhoopendra Singh of the Rashtriya Rifles regiment, who was initially convicted of killing at least three labourers working in South Kashmir’s Shopian. On the intervening night of 18 and 19 July 2020, the Army claimed to have killed three “hardcore terrorists” in the encounter in Shopian’s Amshipora village, but a Jammu and Kashmir Police investigation revealed that the three slain were indeed seasonal labourers from Rajouri.

After the photos of the alleged “hardcore terrorists” were flashed in newspaper headlines and went viral on the Internet, their families in Rajouri found out about the killings. They said the three had gone to Shopian to find work as labourers in the apple and walnut orchards.

The first official statement about the Amshipora gunfight in July 2020 read: “During the search operation, terrorists fired upon army personnel and an encounter started… During the encounter, three unidentified terrorists were killed… The identification and affiliation of the killed terrorists is being ascertained.”

As protests intensified in Rajouri and demands for justice amplified, the Jammu and Kashmir Police constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT). Two months later, the SIT identified the three slain youths as 25-year-old Abrar Ahmed, 20-year-old Imtiyaz Ahmed, and 16-year-old Ibrar. Separately, the Army conducted an internal inquiry which concluded that Captain Bhoopendra Singh had exceeded the power and authority vested in him under the AFSPA. Captain Singh was pronounced guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment by a summary general court-martial.

Captain Bhoopendra Singh appealed before the tribunal, and his counsel argued: “Such conviction of a young officer in this manner would have a very demoralising effect on other officers who are sacrificing their lives for the nation.” The tribunal found the order of the general court martial “improper”, added that the evidence was not “convincing enough to hold the applicant guilty of the charges levelled against him.” His sentence was suspended.

The Jammu and Kashmir Police’s SIT had filed a 1,400-page chargesheet against Captain Bhoopendra Singh before the district court in Shopian in December 2020. The SIT chargesheet blamed Tabish Nazir Malik and Basheer Ahmed Lone, two civilians allegedly working for the Army as informers, as well as Captain Singh, for staging the “encounter”. According to the chargesheet, Captain Singh posed as Major Basheer and planted weapons and materials on the three labourers from Rajouri to dub them as armed militants.

Similarly, in 2015, an Army court martial had awarded life imprisonment to five army personnel, including an officer of the rank of colonel, for staging a gunfight in 2010 in Machil area in North Kashmir’s frontier district of Kupwara that killed three civilians. The verdict was seen as a reversal of the earlier practice of denial of human rights abuses by military personnel in Kashmir. But the hope was short-lived. The Armed Forces Tribunal not only suspended the sentence but also granted bail to all five convicted army personnel, including the Colonel.

A similar encounter took place in South Kashmir’s Pathribal area in March 2000. At the time, US President Bill Clinton was in India on an official visit. At least five civilians—farmers, goatherds and a cloth merchant—were killed in the gunfight by Rashtriya Rifles personnel. They were dubbed “foreign mercenaries” and held responsible for the massacre of over 30 Sikhs in Chittisinghpora on March 20, 2000.

A subsequent chargesheet submitted by the CBI and DNA evidence established that all five were innocent and executed in an extrajudicial manner. Two of them were identified as goatherds. Four years later, in January 2014, the Army passed a “not-guilty ruling” in the Pathribal case as well.

The track record of such cases is perhaps why there is little hope in Kashmir that the investigation into the Ganderbal incident will be taken to a logical conclusion and the guilty prosecuted and punished. The state often announces cash rewards as well to anyone who neutralises an armed militant in Jammu and Kashmir.

In 2015, Kishalay Bhattacharjee, journalist and academic, wrote a book titled Blood on My Hands: Confessions of Staged Encounters, based on confessions from serving and retired security personnel and officers about staged encounters, which highlighted disturbing and graphic details. The book reveals how Special Police Officers are used by the authorities to conduct fake arrests, stage the surrender of manufactured militants, and erase evidence. It also notes the absence of accountability of security forces in Assam, Kashmir, Manipur, and other disturbed areas.

Bhattacharjee writes: “In this book, perhaps for the first time, some of the perpetrators of this form of violence have narrated accounts of how they hunted their prey. Their revelations of how the system has coerced and supported them in committing atrocities, then concealed and even rewarded acts of almost unthinkable depravity, are profoundly disturbing, and compel one to question the essential morality of civil government in India.”

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